


Like Coffee

by Weevilo707



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Humanstuck, M/M, they're both poor college students, who hate their jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707
Summary: Dave fucking hated his job. He doesn't even like coffee, it was just the only place that actually called him back. He guessed some of his coworkers made it a bit better though.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonPaw17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonPaw17/gifts).



Dave fucking hated his job, but he guessed that was a pretty average struggle for fucking dirt poor college students.

He didn’t even like coffee though. He’d only gotten the job because out of the twelve places he put applications in they were the only ones to actually call back. His boss kept offering him some throughout training but Dave didn’t care how much amazing chocolate or creams or sugar you put in it, the shit was still bitter as fuck to him. He’d managed to get pretty numb to the smell after the first couple weeks of working here but his nose would still wrinkle whenever he walked in first thing in the morning.

Still, it was money. There was a hell of a lot of times where Dave sincerely wondered if getting yelled at over increasingly complicated variations of nasty ass bean water was worth barely minimum wage, but he stayed so he guessed it must have been.

As much as he fucking hated his job though, it was nothing compared to how much Karkat Vantas hated his job.

Dave hadn’t noticed the hatred at first, because the dude was surprisingly good at hiding it. For the first couple of days he’d just seemed like another blank smile wearing coworker who only had a fifty percent chance of actually possessing a soul. Not only that but the dude fucking _loved_ coffee. Shit was his goddamn lifeblood. Dave was certain that he’d had every single thing on the menu and several things that weren’t within his first week there. He always had a cup of his own with him that he’d drink in-between taking orders or brewing new batches or whatever else he was sent to do. Dave had a feeling that was in no small part responsible for the massive bags under his eyes.

It wasn’t until one day when Dave was sent into the back room to get some more biscuits and cookies to restock the front displays that he saw the soulless customer service mask completely thrown to the wind.

“Uh, you okay dude?” Dave asked, temporarily forgetting about his need to grab cookies when he saw Karkat shaking as he stood next to the supply of cups. There was a small pile of cup shards at his feet, and one in his hands that was halfway through being shredded. They were the plastic cups too, not the Styrofoam ones.

“Fucking fantastic, why?” he asked back, his voice a clipped growl, so very different from the bland politeness he’d heard him use with customers. Dave raised an eyebrow, really not believing that answer.

“Just a hunch,” he said, trying to remember if there was anything unusual that would have caused a rage breakdown. There was that one bitchy soccer mom he overheard in Karkat’s line ordering shit for her under 12 year old kids like the coffee shop had some sort of children’s menu, but he hadn’t seen how that had gone. “What, the twentieth mom on the student council who’s just ‘absolutely never been treated with this much disrespect before. Their son Rhyaann needs a mocha latte before his soccer match and this line is ridiculous. They are going to be _late_ I need to speak to your manager’ in a row finally break you?” 

“They can’t fucking break me. I was broken a long time ago,” Karkat said in the most serious tone Dave had ever heard him use. He would have started laughing if he wasn’t still vaguely worried about him. His hands kept shaking and he’d completely obliterated the cup at this point, reaching over and starting on another.

“Uh, should you be doing that?” Dave asked, pointing towards the cups.

“I’d really like to see any of you assholes try to stop me,” Karkat said. Dave stared at him for a moment, taking a good look at the hands as they were tearing up the cups. He was kind of concerned that he was going to cut himself on the sharp edges of the plastic, but surprisingly the motions were very careful and there wasn’t a single scratch from what Dave could see.

“Alright then,” Dave said, shrugging. “You on break right now?”

“Yeah,” Karkat answered simply. Dave left him to his cup destruction at that, since it wasn't his business. It took him a moment to remember what he was doing but eventually he went and got the cookies he was actually sent back here for.

After that Dave wouldn’t say it was common to find Karkat in such a state, but it did seem to happen at least like once a month. The normal rage fits he’d have in the back room on his breaks weren’t quite so bad as those. Which was a good thing because Dave was pretty sure he’d get himself fired if he kept destroying cups on a regular basis.

When he wasn’t gritting through his teeth to be polite to assholes he was drowning his sorrows in the most bitter coffee Dave had ever come across and somehow Karkat had become his favorite coworker by far.

Once he’d seen him practically tearing his hair out in the breakroom while bitching about some moron customer trying to order shit off the secret menu, seeing him just barely managing to keep up the polite customer service face was a lot more entertaining. Complaining with him was even more fun and holy shit was it needed sometimes. Dave always knew a vast majority of people were dumb as fuck, but boy howdy nothing highlighted that quite as well as the service industry.

Karkat was just so fucking bitter stuck all pretending to be sweet and absolutely hating it. It was a lot like coffee thinking about it, but unlike coffee Dave somehow really liked it.

“I’m going to fucking murder everyone here and get fired,” Karkat growled one day when Dave walked into the back room. He was on his break right now, but he wasn’t sure if Karkat was or not. He had a half torn apart cup in his hands though, so that wasn’t a good sign.

“What happened this time?” Dave asked. He couldn’t remember anything particularly irritating happening, but he guessed he could have been busy at the time. It'd been a pretty steady day work wise so far. From what he could remember Karkat seemed a lot tenser than usual, but Dave couldn’t figure out what could have been the cause. 

Still, it’d been a while since he’d last seen Karkat doing the cup routine, so this was kinda worrying. It seemed to be happening a lot less lately. Dave had been hoping that them complaining about work together helped Karkat as much as it helped him. 

“You know the new manager?” Karkat asked. The cup in his hands was no more, so Dave reached over and handed him another one.

“Yeah, what about him?”

“I just got fucking told off for drinking too much coffee. It’s a fucking coffee shop what else am I supposed to drink here?” he snapped, pulling a side of the cup clean in half.

“Seriously? That’s fucking bullshit, it’s not like we don’t always have shit we don’t sell anyway,” Dave said. “Fucking capitalism ruining shit.” Karkat didn’t respond, just continuing to tear up his cup some more. Dave tried to remember if he’d done it since the new manager showed up. He didn’t think he did. Yeah, Dave was just gonna keep an eye out for him just in case, it wouldn’t be good to get caught destroying shit right after getting in trouble.

“I swear if they start making me pay I’ll go and get my own shit from some other store that doesn’t fucking suck,” he grumbled after a moment.

“Have you had any today?” Dave asked. It was still pretty early in the day but now that he was thinking about it, he didn’t actually see a cup by him while he was working like he usually did usual.

“No, they pounced on me as soon as I got here,” he said, an exhausted tone to his voice. “Didn’t get any fucking sleep last night either,” he added. Dave frowned, grabbing him by the shoulder and leading him to the break room before sitting him down on the couch there.

“Wait right here,” Dave said before leaving the break room. He guessed it didn’t look like Karkat was heading anywhere anyway. When he came back he was in the same spot he left him, the same cup still in his hands even. It seemed like he was starting to slow down on that, which was a good thing. Meant he wasn’t quite as worked up as before. That or he just realized his supply of cups was now in the other room so he was trying to savor the one he had left.

“Here ya go man,” he said, taking the torn up remains of the cup out of Karkat’s hands and replacing it with an intact cup currently full of one of the drinks Dave remembered Karkat liking best. A look of confusion and annoyance fell over Karkat’s face.

“What the fuck are you doing? They just told me to stop I’ll get fired you jackass,” he snapped.

“No you won’t man, it’s paid for,” Dave told him. Karkat looked very confused for a moment before realization finally washed over him.

“You didn’t have to, this shit’s not worth spending money on,” Karkat grumbled, taking a sip despite his words.

“Yeah, it’s fucking disgusting. I don’t get how any of you actually enjoy drinking it at all,” Dave said, sitting down next to him on the small as fuck couch. He could see Karkat rolling his eyes over the rim of his cup. He didn’t seem as worked up and pissed off as he had a few minutes ago though, which was nice.

“Proves how much you know. Coffee isn’t something you drink to enjoy, it’s something you drink to _exist,”_ Karkat said. Dave didn’t bother trying to hide the amused look on his face at that. Before he could say anything though Karkat continued, his voice a lot softer than Dave was expecting. “Thanks though, seriously.”

“Don’t worry about it man we get some sort of shitty employee discount anyw-”

Okay.

They were kissing now.

It took Dave a few seconds to actually process what was going on enough to start kissing back. Once he did though it was really fucking nice. A little awkward, Karkat still had a half full cup of coffee in his hand that he had to keep out of the way and Dave’s shades had gotten knocked into a kind of uncomfortable position but the actual kissing itself was kind of great.

The sound of someone fucking around in the adjacent room caused the two of them to quickly break away. There was a short moment where they just stared at each other before Dave couldn’t help the slightly disgusted look that crossed his face.

“What’s that look about?” Karkat asked, a bit of genuine worry seeping into the offended tone of his voice.

“You taste like coffee dude, it’s fucking all consuming,” Dave told him. The worry seemed to leave him at that, but he still huffed in frustration.

“Well too fucking bad because that’s not going away anytime soon,” Karkat said. Dave shrugged, leaning back into the couch a bit more.

“Eh, it’s cool. Way better than most coffee I’ve had, I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” he said, before realizing he’d said that out loud and the implications and wait fuck. “Uh, I mean like only if that’s a thing you would want to do and shit it’s cool if this was like a one-time ‘hey thanks for the coffee here’s a bro kiss’ thing.”

“Did… did you seriously just say ‘bro kiss?’ Really?” Karkat asked, disbelief in his voice. Dave couldn’t blame him for that, it was one of the dumber sounding things he'd said in recent memory. Before he could defend the honor of the bro kiss though Karkat started speaking again. “But no, I mean it uh, it’d be nice if it was more than just a one-time thing,” he added.

“Oh. Awesome,” Dave said. Another long moment passed without either of them doing anything. Karkat took another sip of his coffee and Dave tried to look casual as he stood up, failing spectacularly.

“Well uh, I should probably get back, I’m not sure how long it’s been since my break started,” Dave said. Before he could run off Karkat stood up as well, pushing Dave back down on the couch.

“It’s been like ten minutes at most, you’ve still got time. I should head back though,” he said and Dave nodded because yeah okay that seemed a bit more likely.

“Hey,” Dave called as he started to leave the break room.

“Yeah?”

“You doing anything after work? Like we could um, grab something to eat or something,” he asked. A small smile spread across Karkat’s face at that.

“Sure, that sounds pretty nice,” he said before leaving the break room completely. Dave just sat there for a moment, slowly processing everything that had just happened. There was still the faintest taste of coffee in his mouth.

Didn’t taste half bad, actually.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to moonpaw17 for this!! It was super fun to write, so I really hope you like it!!!


End file.
